


Foreign Object

by MountainRose



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood, Body Horror, Bucky barnes' metal arm, Bucky's Agency, Chicken Soup, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emergency Medical Treatment, Injury, M/M, Medical Procedures, Pain, Tony's gonna fix it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-25 01:52:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6175687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MountainRose/pseuds/MountainRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky comes through the window in a hail of soaking leather and blood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the indomitable Szzzt and Synteis

Bucky comes through the window in a hail of soaking leather and blood. Steve and Tony both scramble to their feet away from him; Tony’s eyes fix on the knife and he half-blocks with a forearm that Bucky sweeps away with the back of his human hand.

He crashes into Tony before Steve has a chance to navigate around the dinner table, the cramped flat suddenly a little more than just an inconvenience. Silverware and plates go flying and Bucky and Tony fetch up against the table tangled together, the sharp icy cold point of the knife just touching the small of Tony’s back. 

They freeze in place, the clatter of rain on the sink and the spinning chime of a plate on the floor highlighting the silence while Bucky _doesn't kill Tony._

“ _Bucky_ \--” Steve breathes, the horror that Tony’s too shocked to feel thickening his voice. 

Ice water starts to seep into Tony’s shirt and Bucky staggers against him. The knifepoint vanishes and Bucky twists his fist in Tony’s shirt instead, dragging him to the kitchen counter. The reason...Tony’s shirt is creeping pink, soaking up rain-diluted blood from Bucky’s jacket and Bucky needs to sit down, he almost falls onto the stool, perching like he might go down all the way. His arm, the metal one, isn’t in the sleeve of his jacket and the leather slips off--

It doesn’t look like a shoulder anymore, the metal casing has been torn away from the biological remnants. The struts that pierce his body to attach to bone are exposed, bent and twisted so far out of shape that Tony can’t guess how they could have fitted together under the gleaming plates in the photos.

Not gleaming now. 

Lower, where Bucky’s ...stump disappears into the torn up mechanisms, the slick chrome is streaked with new and old blood. It drips down his skin, meeting the stormwater and curling over mechanisms that were never meant to see open air. 

“Take--” Bucky gasps, chest spasming where ribs interact with shoulder, and the icy point of the knife comes back, hovering over Tony’s kidneys. He’s leaning heavily on the counter, on Tony, his body trembling and barely able to hold his head up.

“--t’ke it off me. Cu--cut it _off_.”

Tony swallows, frozen in indecision. He-- there are enough blood vessels in the shoulder to kill a normal person in six seconds. He isn’t that kind of doctor. But.

The knife tremors, slicing his skin like butter.

“Yes. Of course, shit. I’ll need some tools, and Steve... Steve’s gonna be my assistant.”

Steve’s staring at Bucky’s back, unresponsive and horrified; Tony risks a look down, and there’s something awful under the sodden drape of Bucky’s hair. Cables fitted with needles and bone screws dangle against his back, trailing blood in an arc and dripping some sort of clear liquid. He tears his eyes away and shuts them so he can breathe for a second, he needs to _think_ \--

_Neural pickups, torn free._

Jhesus fucking wept. 

He swallows, gritting his teeth against the smell of blood. 

“Steve. Captain. Get my tools from the suit. Go.”

Steve twitches and goes, hasty and banging into his own furniture in his haste. He grabs a medical bag from the hall on his way past and sweeps aside the remains of their dinner to make space for them. 

Tony opens the toolbox and...breathes. Okay. 

He picks out a laser soldering iron and a multi-head driver and starts picking off armor plates so he can see what he’s doing.

Under the prosthetic's shoulder, the skin's rough and wet with blood against the back of Tony's fingers, scarring thick and puckered with strange tremors as he pulls more and more of the plates off. The bigger structures that transmit force from the effectors to Bucky's rotator cuff have torn free from the bones, ugly metal spears arching out of the skin and distorting his whole shoulder where they’ve twisted and come unmoored. There’s no detaching them from the forearm, but they’re loose from Bucky; Tony can track where they’ve torn through his shoulder from the blue-black of bleeding under the skin.

Blood dribbles along them, thick and clotting into black, viscous strings, then drips into the mechanisms of the arm, burning up on the power supply and spitting smoke.

It hurts, all of it. Bucky is so horrifyingly _good_ at keeping himself still, but he’s stone still with pain. His face is white and he’s so _cold_ under Tony’s hands.

Tony starts with the stump socket, cutting what he can and unscrewing the rest, until the cup releases what’s left of Bucky’s bicep and humerus, the skin macerated and white. One of the struts is centimeters away from sliding out of Bucky’s skin entirely and the others aren’t far behind. Whatever did this pulled the arm straight out of its moorings, tearing the screws loose.

Snarled knots of silver and pink show where screws ejected by the serum have come out, and thick ropes of scarring around the struts attest to the struggle the serum’s waging against the raw titanium, trying to heal around it. Lower, near the cut end of the arm, there's deep pressure damage that's dented the stump of his bicep and stopped the stump from healing over cleanly. The flesh there is blue, bloodless, and Tony hopes desperately that it’s still alive.

“This is gonna hurt, babe, okay? I can take it off all at once but it’s really gonna hurt,” Tony murmurs. Bucky nods, jaw working like he’s going to break a molar, head on Tony’s shoulder. Water works it’s way into Tony’s collar, spreading the cold between them and making Tony’s skin tighten with goosebumps. At his back, Steve's hovering like a guardian angel; hands clean and ready with bandages, but also watching the knife intently. From the way Bucky's leaning, the tremble in the icy cold point threatening Tony's back, he's barely holding onto consciousness, lucidity is too much to ask.

Whatever happened to do this, whatever feat of unconscionable violence Bucky was running from, he’s at the end of his strength. He’s empty, muscles trembling and weak, his fuel run out all at once. He’s also as rigid and cold as a statue, one solid block of pain and determination. 

Tony picks up the laser soldering pen and aims onto the head of the last screw, waiting for the whisp of smoke that shows the thread locker has boiled. The arm’s a piece of work, fucking awful biomechanics combined with way too much power. Even without this damage, it must have been destroying Bucky's spine, his shoulder, burning his stump if he used it too much, freezing his aorta when it got too cold, _fucking hell_. No wonder the first thing he'd done was ask for it off. 

He swaps the laser for an eight-flange screwdriver and that's it, the last one. Tony lays a hand on the scarred, puckered skin of Bucky's shoulder and pops the screw out. The whole assembly loosens and slides to the floor in a horror of bloody, disarticulated elements. Struts slide out of Bucky’s shoulder with a deep sucking sound, a gout of blood and clotted lumps splattering down after them. 

Bucky groans thin and high through his teeth, teetering sideways now all that weight is gone. Tony struggles with his grip, hands slipping in all the blood, and pulls most of Bucky’s weight onto his chest. There are bandages ready, in case something is torn too badly, an artery in the brachial plexus, and he presses a fat pad of cotton over the biggest hole, the fastest flow of blood. There are too many to cover them all, but Steve’s there, covering the ones he can’t reach and winding gauze over the whole lot, pinning Tony’s hand in place for now, helping him press hard on the gush of blood.

Below, colour rushes into the white skin where the main attachment band had sat, flesh Tony had worried was dead flushing with life, and Bucky twitches against Tony's shoulder. His good hand, his human hand, clenches over Tony's back, the knife he'd been holding against Tony's kidneys falling to the tile, and instead of cold steel Bucky's using _Tony_ for comfort. He presses his face into Tony's neck, a hint of teeth against his jugular, where Bucky's gritting his teeth against the pain. 

Tony breathes deep, his whole body moving with it, and tucks his cheek against the top of Bucky’s head. Between the arm coming off and the knife falling away, Steve's relaxed his guard enough to crowd close and help support Bucky's sheer mass. He checks under Tony’s hand and smiles tentatively, nodding that Tony should pull it away. The gauze underneath is still white, they didn’t rupture anything-- or if they did, Bucky’s body is pumping out so many clotting factors it doesn’t matter. Tony shivers gratefully and helps tie off the bandage.

“There you go, handsome. All done. You wanna shoot it? Oh, hey, can I melt it into slag?” Tony asks, though he keeps his voice low and slow, soothing, and doesn't expect an answer. 

Bucky shifts his stump from the pain-locked extension he'd kept it in for the duration, a deep, heartfelt groan of relief thrumming between them and ending on a breathy sigh against Tony’s neck. Steve and Tony, frozen in readiness while Bucky moved his wrecked shoulder, exchange a look, Steve eye-pointing at the back of Bucky’s neck. Tony nods silently and carefully holds the greasy, bloody hair away.

The mess of blood and spinal fluid left by the neural hookups is slick on his hand and Tony restrains a shudder. It slides down Bucky's spine in thick gobbets, the hookups ruined permanently by whatever had torn the arm so messily away from Bucky’s body. Steve’s white as a sheet but he runs sterile saline over the mess, washing it away. 

Bucky makes a deep rumble, a _good_ sound. 

“It's closed up, scabbed over,” Steve mumbles, swapping the saline for a handful of sterile cotton and swabbing the worst away. 

“That's... Good. Okay.” Tony takes a deep, centering breath; Bucky is still and passive against him, now, except for the slow tickle of his eyelashes against Tony's neck. “No stitches.”

Steve meets his eyes over Bucky's shoulder and winces, agreeing. 

“Bucky? Hey there, thanks for dropping the knife, okay?” Tony says, pressing his palms to Bucky's ribs, shifting just enough to get his attention. 

He breathes deep, dragging air in like it's exhausting. “...no arm...no maintenance. No...more.” 

Heart wrenching, Tony nods, turning his face to the ceiling with his eyes closed. “Yeah, never again, okay? What do you need, Buck? Whatever you want, you got it. No need for a knife.” 

Silence, stretching on as Steve works on the open wounds over Bucky's spine. The bastard shouldn't even be breathing, he's lucky to be alive. 

“...cold.”

“Yeah, you're pretty shocky. You wanna go to bed? Nice warm bed...” Tony presses his hands against him, warm compared to Bucky's naked back, and rubs slowly. “Just gonna make sure you're not leaking.” 

Steve holds up a tube of hypernumb, Simmons's answer to supersoldier metabolisms, and Tony nods. Bucky's system will take it and he desperately needs the relief.

“...I...I can sleep?” Bucky asks, his voice a ground-glass imitation of humanity. 

“Yeah. Yeah, you can sleep. You can sleep.” 

Bucky sighs as the gel goes on, muscles fluttering as they lose sensation, and his whole weight starts slipping sideways. Steve lurches forwards, gloves still covered in the hypernumb and Tony scrambles to ease Bucky to the floor. There’s blood and who knows what else puddled and slick on Steve’s kitchen tiles, plus it’s cold as the asscrack of winter down there. 

“Your bed clean?” Tony asks, combing his fingers through Bucky’s hair and keeping it away from his neck. They have no idea how resistant to infection Bucky is and Tony has no desire to find out.

“Yeah, let me deglove, I’ll carry him though.” 

Tony glances at Steve’s medical kit, eviscerated and scattered across his kitchen floor. “Yeah. You’ve contaminated those ones, anyway. Did you get gel on him?”

Steve winces, hands fluttering like he wants to touch, then redirecting as he turns the gloves inside out first. “Not anywhere that doesn’t need it.” He slides his arms under Bucky’s chest and legs, lifting him like a toddler rather than a princess. Any one else would slip a disc doing that, but Steve’s something else. 

Tony lifts Bucky’s head to Steve’s shoulder, makes sure it’ll stay there and has a palpitation when Bucky tucks his nose into the crook of Steve’s neck. Steve goes slightly crosseyed, worried. “He was out in this for way too long. He needs a warm bath, or...” 

Tony pushes him in the direction of his room, shaking his head. “A hot cloth will have to do, Steve, he was holding a knife to my descending aorta five minutes ago, we’re in no position to do things to him while he’s sleeping. Go, I’ll get this.”

Steve goes, holding Bucky like he’s made of broken things held together with paper. Tony gathers the medical kit, ignoring anything that’s touched the floor or the hypernumb, and follows closely. He closes the bedroom door behind them and cranks on Steve’s space heater, then the radiator, as high as they’ll go. 

“Tony--”

“Shit, yeah. I’m coming.” Together, they lower Bucky onto the bed so none of his wounds touch the bedding, his stump resting on his ribs and his back to Steve. “Here, dress those, I’ll handle warming him up, okay?” 

Steve nods and takes the kit. “I have hot water bottles, bottom drawer,” he says, pointing with his chin while he peels off the backing from a big dressing. Why Steve has a full kit of bandages and pads and everything when he’s constantly telling Tony to go to medical instead of JARVIS for his scrapes is anyone’s guess. 

Back in the kitchen, Tony sets water boiling and makes up a bottle of iso-8 (not banana; if Steve hated it, Bucky probably wouldn’t be that impressed either) while he’s there. He steps around the blood on the floor, smeared by their feet, and takes his bloody shoes off before going back into the bedroom. 

Half the hot water goes in the cow-patterned hot water bottle, the rest he sets on the bedside table while he fetches cloths and liquid antiseptic from the bathroom cabinet. With Steve working over Bucky’s arm, now free of their quick bandages and mercifully not bleeding more than a trickle, Tony climbs onto the bed at Bucky’s front and starts working on wiping away the rain-diluted blood that stains the whole left side of his torso. 

The warm water heats his skin back from the uncanny valley and Tony feels tension leak out of him as he sweeps away the dirt and fear of a life as a weapon. Once he has cleaned Bucky’s belly, he tucks the cow hot water bottle there, and Bucky stirs, his good hand groping weakly at the warmth. Tony hesitates, then carefully guides his hand to hold the hot water bottle. Bucky hugs it close, his bad shoulder moving like he still has an arm and can hold on with both hands. 

Steve’s nearly done, the red and silver mess of new blood and old scars hidden under layers of clean bandages and numbing gel, so the movement doesn’t cause a problem and _damn_ , that's a smile on Steve’s face. Sure, he’s possibly also crying, but what the hell, Tony’ll take it. 

He looks down, wrings out the cloth and gets it good and hot again, holding it to Bucky’s cheekbone, then wiping gently down his cheek. The smears of black greasepaint come loose with the heat and Tony focuses on that for a while, wiping away Hydra’s stupid fucking anti-glare domino mask. 

“Okay, I’m done. Can I... His leathers are wet through.” 

Tony freezes. Steve’s taken his gloves off and has the shears, looking at Tony like he knows the answers. 

“No, I-- we should ask, first. And get him to drink.” 

He expects Steve to question him, but Steve’s just...so lost. Vacant. He nods and fumbles the shears putting them down with a clank on the bedside table. His fingers are shaking, and Tony reaches across Bucky’s mauled shoulder with his cloth-warmed hand and Steve tangles their fingers together for a second.

“Okay.” 

Tony nods and smiles at him, even though it hurts his face.

“Hey, Buck, buddy?” Tony crooned, leaning close and dabbing at Bucky's wet face with a hot towel. “Hey, rise and shine.” 

\--------------------

He’s....warm. There’s something warm and comforting against his stomach, sinking all through him and making warm inroads on the chill. He'd come a long way in the storm for this mission and he's glad, so glad. 

His fingers flex, making the warm, cuddly thing feel warmer and more cuddled. Something licks his face, rough like a cloth but hot and damp like a dog, and it feels so good that he wants to stay here forever. 

“--uddy? Rise an...”

A dry, warm cloth covers his cheekbones and he nuzzles into it, breathing a warm body scent that ... _yes_. This is why he came, this is the mission. No more maintenance, only warmth.

“D’ya wanna take your leathers off, babe?” Someone asks. He...urgh. Yes. They are awful, wet and clammy and stealing his precious heat. 

He blinks carefully, wary, but everything hurts less than it did, and the Weight is gone, gone, gone, melt it to slag. He twists, rolling, but warm hands, nice and soft and warm hands, stop him before he can land on his back. Oh. There is... It hurts, from a long way away. 

“Boots first, you better not have stinky feet, buddy.” 

He makes a face and wriggled his toes in his boots. _Better_ _believe it, doll. I been walking through storm gutters._ He fumbles at his waist and passes over a short-bladed knife, holding it blindly in the direction of the weight denting the bed. “...g’nna have to cut the laces, been a while.”

Steve _Stevie,jerk,punk,doll,Rogers,Cap--_ That voice winds around his brain, squeezing shit out he didn’t know was in there, damn. 

“--hurt his--...--easy. Do you still--..” It fades in and out like a field radio, the sound of the Fair weaving in the empty spaces. He’d had...bullseye candy. Mint. 

Pressure eases from around his foot and he flexes the arch, pushing at the other boot with his toes -- _mud and water were a bad combination, they hadn’t had dry socks in a week, Yancy was limping, his boot leaking something foul--_ and he lets the handlers pull his socks off. They’re good about it, he likes them, he’ll be gentle. They are not Hydra, he says it again to himself; he will be gentle.

Something hot and dry wraps around his feet and he revises his statement; they are worth holding onto with both hands. He remembers...the little one pulling him off the table, both arms feeling _real_ , and they’d gone...home.

This, here, bed and the voice. It’s a good place. He wants to stay; warm is the opposite of ... all the things he hates. Good for operational security, warmth. Arm gone, cold gone, does this mean he can cut off the _hair_?

_Watch it, bud, freedom's going to your head._

“Okay, I’m gonna cut them, just hold still, I gotcha.”

Cold metal touches his hip and he flinches, but he can hold still despite. Warm fingers follow, along the outside of his thigh and down to his ankle, stripping away the sticky, cold armor and exposing him to warm air.

“...better. ‘s...good,” he mumbles, not quite able to make his eyes focus on the half-familiar brunet with the shears. He’s so tired. 

The leather slides out from under his hip and he kicks the pants off, sinking gratefully into soft, warm bedding. His toes curl against a towel and another rubs over his legs, hot enough to be worth a groan from his limited store of energy.

“There, I think we’re dry enough,” the one on the bed with him says, then drapes a _blanket_ over him. That, that--

Bucky’s mind goes white and smooth, his world shrinking back down to the warm thing pressed to his belly and the absence where the Weight used to be. He sighs, unable to keep the good feeling in his chest from making noise, and a warm hand lands on his side, patting gently.

“Hey, hey, don’t go back to sleep yet, I’ve got you a drink, keep you in sugars while you heal up.”

He cracks an eyelid, stubbornly refusing to shift, even for a drink. The bottle is lurid blue, glowin-- ah, no, the glow is the guy’s chest...Stark? He was...a target, once. 

Not now, now he will shoot guys off him; he has provided the warmth. He’s keeping this one. 

He holds his hand out for the bottle and pops it open without moving his...the empty place. With the Weight gone...he drinks, and ignores the white bandages in the corner of his eye. 

He doesn’t remember putting the bottle down, but he blinks and it’s gone, the blanket pulled up over his shoulder, and when he blinks again, he doesn’t open his eyes again for sixteen hours. 

\------------

“Let's...never do that again. Not the ‘finding your long lost friend’, that was great, but the ‘blood on the kitchen tile’ aspect.” 

Steve chuckles and leans against his shoulder, the bed creaking with the weight of two super soldiers and a engineer with the build of a blacksmith. “I’m just glad...”

Tony nods, he gets it, of course he does. 

“We fixed him up, he’ll be healed in a few days.” 

Steve tucks his face against Tony and his shoulders hitch with a suppressed sob.

“...maybe a bit longer. We got his back, Steve. We do.”


	2. Waking Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

Bucky wakes up. 

His shoulder throbs, he’s warm, and there’s voices nearby. One of the heat sources moves. Away, mattress tipping. No, the handlers must stay.

He reaches out and the arm grinds, bone on bone. Other arm works better and the wrist he catches is muscular and slim. He has no words, but the handler must not leave. He squeezes, gently.

“I’m gonna get another blanket, okay?”

His grip slackens; yes, that is okay. But his back is cold _now_ and the handler was keeping it warm. Warmth is required for maximal functionality of the-- He stalls, a sound like a small mammal filling the space between his ears. The wrist is replaced by a different hand, warmer, and he lets the first handler go. He is. Damp. Damp blankets are not optimal.

Distasteful. 

“We should get rid of the towels--” 

Bucky kicks them away but his _back_. It protests. Damage warnings progress in a jagged line from the digital jack down to the arm, up into the analogue processor. He is hushed, movements stilled with warm hands on his legs, ribs. Stillness reduces damage warning intensity.

Good job, handler. 

More blankets replace the towels, then the quilt returns with handler two. This time, the handlers crawl together, rather than on either side of the unit. It is not optimal for him, but possibly for the handler.

However. Augmented handler is in the middle; this is bad strategy. 

The voice is damaged by disuse, then overuse, sequentially but he knows they understand it. It will do. He grips the augmented unit by the wrist and, ugh, drags his eyes open. It is not awful, but they are crusty. The light is acceptably dim. No sniper could see through the drapes in this light. The augmented unit’s stupid sad face forms a tactically unsound proportion of his visual input. “Perimeter check, unit St-- Stevie.” 

The stupid face becomes less prominent, and goes to check the windows. Unit-- the engineer. Target, resource, warm, pain relief. Unaugmented squishy civilian. He should be. Within arms reach. He was warm, he reduced the damage warnings exponentially. A tug pulls him close enough to cover in blankets and leech heat from. 

Stevie checks in, perimeter secure, in a quiet voice, and settles on the engineer’s other side. Good. Even damaged, they are strongest this way. Bracketing.

He can defend without the arm. He has done it before. It would be easier than lugging kilos of useless shit wired into the unit’s shoulder. 

Warmth and stillness return and the unit settles so repairs can proceed. 

A deep breath as he’s waking next alerts the handlers-- he has a good feeling about these ones, does not wish to alarm them in any way. 

“Good morning, Bucky.”

He doesn’t trust his voice, or open his eyes, but he likes that designation, it makes his cheeks bunch upwards and his rough lips sting. 

“Would you like a drink, buddy? We’ve got cherry and electrolytes. You bled a lot.” 

His body feels heavy even with the arm gone-- _Gone._ His eyes snap open and he moves the-- what’s left-- his _stump_ to look. It’s maybe ten inches long, thick with bandages and muscle. There’s rust staining the wrappings, and pain shoots through it like a taser to the ulnar servomotor. 

“Hey, hey... it’s fine, it’s healing up really well--” 

There’s no metal in him. The thrumming sickly throb of invasion, of _wrong_ is gone. He lets out all his air and lets himself drop back into the pillows. It’s gone. This engineer had taken...it's gone. He is better. Less but better. 

“--listening?” 

He wasn't. He'd missed a briefing. His face aches on one side, creasing and stretching out the cracks on his lips. These two, they ain't gonna turn on the volts. They don't --mmhheh-- _have_ volts. “Audio disconnected, visuals going...mm. Offline.” He closes his eyes and lets the blood loss drag his muscles into the mattress. 

The bed shivers and Stevie is laughing. Such a good sound. The face creases again, giving him away. 

“Alright, automata, refuel. Straw.” The technician taps plastic against his mouth, and he drinks. The storm, the cold, the wet; he knows he bled a lot, they don't gotta tell him. 

The juice is foul, but satisfies a hole in his belly, coats his swollen tongue. 

“Technician. Unit...designation?” he rasps, his good hand reaching for him. 

“Designation 'James Buchanan Barnes’, babe. You're safe, I'm not a-- well I _am,_ but I prefer the term 'mechanic’--” 

His voice comes from somewhere real old, like the grinding of rocks in the deep mines, like the glacier calving into the sea ice. “No. Your _name_ , I'm ... Bucky. The fuck kinda name is Buchanan anyway.” 

“Don't you talk about a president that way, Buck.” 

He grunts and presses himself deeper into the bed. The stump hurts fiercely. “Don't remember no president, Steve. I got holes the size of yer fist in my brain.” 

They're quiet, and the voice, the old, rough, knowing voice fades and he feels his tongue grow still. 

Eventually, the bed shudders. “It's Tony. Stark.” 

He nods, silently. The handler that ordered Stark destroyed is dead. The doctor that turned up the volts, is dead. The order to destroy Steve burnt the others out of his head like Gabriel's flaming dick metaphor. 

He knows why he dragged himself here now. Steve is the best handler, and Tony is the best technician. 

His stomach groans, which it definitely does not have permission to do, and he palms it. Or at least, the hollow in the blankets over it. His good shoulder aches, the back of his neck aches, and his throat aches, but most of all, the empty space where the metal used to be doesn't _._ The stump, yes, it burns with aggressive healing, with the spaces that still bleed, but the metal could feel, and now it is gone. 

“Yeah, let's get you something to eat. Steve, you get him sat up, I'm going to...” Tony stops and Bucky cracks an eyelid. Only one, two would be asking too much. He is being observed intently. “What have you been eating, Bucky? I don't want to feed you something that's gonna make you sick.” 

He considers this. He hasn't been eating much of anything. Hydra bases come stocked with nutrient fluid, which doesn't count. “Nutrient mix niner eleven, but you fucking try and feed me that shit, I'll be gone before you can open the bag.” 

Tony blinks in shock for a second, and Bucky snorts, relaxing back down. It’s not like they have that kind of materiel on hand, anyway. 

“Chicken soup it is. Gimme five minutes.”

The bed rocks and the gravity well that was Tony Stark moves away, tilting him slightly towards Steve. This is. Acceptable. 

“You gonna be able to sit up?”

He is warm and heavy, the shiver of bloodloss threatening only at the edges of awareness. Mission compliance; 70%. “Yes. Support. Balance assist required.” 

Steve stands, moves away. There are. Decorative pillows in a pile. Blue, burgundy and cream. The face makes an expression that correlates with finding a rat in the breadbox. He rolls onto the good arm and pushes at the mattress. The blankets are excessively heavy, but the warmth is just right; his body is also too heavy. Raising his head off the pillow is difficult, pushing up onto his elbow, impossible. Pillows stack behind him, instead, and Steve touches the clear skin over his ribs, below the stump. 

It is a vulnerable place. Uncomfortable. The air is cold, Steve’s hand a big improvement. But it is vulnerable. His skin pebbles with a chill and it is white, his hand is white. He will chill easily. Mission compliance: 50%. The blankets are more attractive than food. 

Steve makes a small animal noise. What, I’m injured here, pal. 

“Here, might as well.” 

Bucky drags his eyes open from dreams of warm blankets and Steve is naked. Thick sweatshirt unzipped and dropped off shoulders; half naked. He holds it out, measuring. 

“Yeah. You’ll be warmer; it won’t slip off like a quilt.” 

He is a pile of limbs connected by stuck hinges, with no battery left. But he wants the sweater. 

“C’mon, I’ll do the heavy lifting.”

Yeah you will, Stevie. Sure. He holds out his hand and Steve lifts him by it, and by a hand on his ribs. All that skin contact wipes out the deep ache of his shoulder, and he sits against the pillows. The sweater goes over his arm, then he levers himself forwards enough to wrap it closed over the stump. Skin-warm for a supersoldier feels like a hot bath. He goes limp.

Ziiiip.

“There, you just take five, you’ve gone-- anyway. Comfy?” 

He snorts, hand loose and boneless on the covers, eyes closed. His neck aches where it rests on the bundled hood, but he is dizzy. The light on his eyelids is anaesthetizing, the body warmth like ketamine. 

Steve smooths the hood out, lifts his head gently in warm hands and folds it into a soft pad for the back of his head. He lets himself loll against the hold, his cheek absorbing warmth from Steve’s palm and his breath a gentle sigh over his wrist. 

He goes offline, acoustics erroring and next time he shifts, his eyes are seized with rust.

“...how many?”

“Mmm... about three thousand. Enough, if he has a few today, he can-- ... --tomorrow. Jay isn’t--...” 

Olfaction demands his attention, signaling food nearby. His stomach cramps and this provides enough impetus to open his eyes after all. 

The technician is there with a big mug, steam coiling in the morning light. He reaches for the fuel. The mug is warm, but not too hot to hold, and the steadying hand on his wrist helps him lift it to his mouth. 

Rich, thick soup, cooled with a shot of heavy cream, coats his tongue with each sip. It’s so calorie dense it makes his jaw ache and settles in his stomach like a warm blanket. When he’s sure it doesn’t contain anything aversive, he drinks the entire portion in long, measured pulls. 

Once his hand is relieved of the mug, he wraps the warmed palm around the empty space under his shoulder. The ribs there feel strange; cold and naked, yes, but also warm without the metal sucking at him. The sunlight seeping through the curtain catches and holds his half-shuttered eyes. There’s dust motes in the shaft of light, drifting leisurely. 

“...your show, Steve, but what if he needs a _doctor_ \--”

“No, Tony. We’ll look under his bandages later; you’ll see.”

The bed rocks and he drags his gaze to the handlers. They’re tense, he uncoils enough to pull on the nearest wrist; a tanned olive one.

“Oh, hey babe, I’m sorry, you must--...want me to lie down with you. Okay, I can do that-- Steve, can I--?” 

He pulls and prods until the engineer is close enough, not listening to the other handler speak; functionality at 35%, proceeding with scheduled shutdown and maintenance. The engineer smells like warm bread, there’s flour on him too, and Bucky settles in with him well and trapped, close and safe, where the good arm can protect him. 

“Yeah, you.” Steve’s choked up, like he’s hurt, Bucky can’t see why. “You haven’t fucking changed, have you, Barnes?” 

The voice is too rough, air in his throat hisses and crackles without forming words. 

He doesn’t know what the words were supposed to be, anyway.

Steve touches his hand, where it is trapping the engineer close and leeching his warmth. Of course, both handlers are very warm, he knew this, it’s why he came. But he didn’t realise what that meant. They are so, so warm. 

They burn the ice out of him.


	3. Chapter 3

The Winter Soldier. 

It’s a misnomer, now. He’s warm, skinny and affectionate. Or is it defensive? He keeps tugging weakly at them when they move away, his eyes sharp on the doors and windows when he can keep them open. 

Tony stays close all morning, held in place by a weak grip on his shirt and Bucky’s obvious insistence. When he does step out of the bedroom, it’s like a hot, heavy haze lifts. The weak, cuddly body on the bed is more than a snuggle buddy and it takes a good two meters of separation before Tony can really think about things other than fixing him up. He kneads his temples, checks the soup --sticking to the back of the spoon and so rich it’d give Tony a heart attack-- and thinks about consequences. Bucky is unlawfully wanted in sixteen countries (Geneva Convention signatories) and lawfully in another five, and every covert operation on the planet would want a look at his brain if they knew it was in one piece. 

If it is in one piece.

Steve can’t be as calm as he looks, and Tony thinks it’s best he take a few minutes out of the gravity well that is James Barnes, so he heads back in and jostles him away from his stunned observation of Bucky’s face. 

“Sugarpie, could you do the washing up? And then I need you to make a few calls, okay?” It’s _Steve’s_ home and they have a well-worn argument about the merits of dishwashers but Steve needs to look away before his eyes dry out from not blinking. He’s not up to making the brain space for chores by himself, or even aware that he’s behaving strangely.

Tony talks quietly with JARVIS too, just after they’ve fed Bucky another cup of famine-victim soup, and has a few things organised at the Tower. Steve’s place is usually under observation from _someone_ , usually a newspaper or alphabet agency that wants some kudos for being first on the scene of a disaster, and is willing to stalk Cap for it. Relocating will be hard, especially covertly, and moving Bucky to a secure building might not be best for him. 

But Tony really wants to take an X-ray of his shoulder and neck. And there’s no getting away from the fact that for the house of a National Treasure, Steve’s place is woefully unfortified.

Tony calls Pepper once he know’s she’s on a lunch break. 

“Pepper. I need you to get somewhere private, sit down and open up your diary.” 

“Tony, hi, how are you,” she replies, cheerful and fake for whoever’s nearby. “Sure! Let me just check my schedule.”

He waits patiently while she signs off with whomever she was eating with, and the background noise cuts off. 

“Okay, go.”

He launches into it without mincing words. “James Barnes made landfall yesterday evening in Steve’s kitchen, injured and hypothermic, while we were in the middle of dinner. _Wham_ , impromptu amputation. We had to remove the metal arm, he insisted.”

“Oh my _god_ Tony, are you alright? Did he--” 

“He threatened me, yeah, held a knife to me until I did it. I’m fine, Pep; he’s...relaxed. Out of his head 90% of the time, but calm and.. Jhesus. He’s pliant. All he wants to do is cuddle.” 

Pepper makes a strangled sound of disbelief. “HE-- _Anthony Stark, do not cuddle with people who hold you at knife point_!”

“He makes a compelling argument in favour,” Tony quips, shifting back towards the bedroom and leaning on the door frame. Bucky’s sitting up, blinking out of Steve’s hoodie like an owl in direct sunlight. He sits lopsided. The muscles on one side of his spine must be much stronger than the other, from the seventy years of weight training the arm caused. 

Pepper makes some kind of rustling sound, possibly shaking the phone in frustration, before coming back on the line. “Do you need restraints? Please tell me you handcuffed him?” 

He smirks lopsidedly. “I don’t think we’re at third base just yet, Pep; let him get his bearings before you suggest that kind of game.” 

The line beeps; she’s hung up. 

He waits, watching Bucky push Steve into the middle of the bed and drop the empty sleeve of his hoodie over Steve’s shoulder. Steve looks horrified and Bucky’s blank expression becomes subtly satisfied when Steve goes very still. 

Getting his ducks in a line. Tony snorts. 

The awful beeping stops. “Fine. I’m coming around. Do you need anything from the pharmacy?” Pepper says. She rustles some more and he raises his voice just enough to speak over whatever she’s doing. 

“Thanks, Pepper, you’re a miracle. I have no idea--” he stops, grimaces. “I don’t know what to do, Pep. He’s fixed up physically, and he’s been on the lam for two years; he’s got to be mostly there. But he talks like...”

She makes a pained sound. “Oh honey. I’ll be right there. You’re sure he’s not a threat?”

“Yeah. He lost a lot of blood, and he feels safe here. Between the weakness and the desire to cuddle, we’re golden. We could do with some hypernumb tubes, and non-stick dressings. He’ll be healed in a couple of days, so we’ve avoided stitches. JARVIS has done a care package too. Easy food.” 

“I’ll pick it up, and _your_ meds, which JARVIS just pinged me about,” she chides.

“Yeah, thanks. I completely forgot.” He rubs his face, rucking up the beard and smoothing it back down. He’s not feeling the effects yet, so it’s not a problem, but it _was_ stupid. 

“See you in twenty, Tony.”

He pockets his phone once the beep sounds; she gets the privilege of hanging up on him, these days. It’s a thing. He pushes away from the sickly sweet death-robot scene and heads to the kitchen. The last of Steve’s emergency energy dense soup is already poured out into a mug, which he microwaves. That makes nine thousand calories, enough protein to repair a gunshot wound, and the calcium to match. Once it’s boiling in the mug, Tony stirs vigorously with a spoon and dumps in a shot of jersey cream. 

Fortunately, everything in Steve’s apartment would put someone with a normal metabolism in a food coma. 

He takes a sip and sticks his tongue straight back out to lick the sticky deliciousness off his lips. Christ. Anyway, it’s not too hot to drink, so he really has no excuse, and heads back to the bedroom. 

Bucky has Steve firmly trapped and appears to be contemplating the still-closed curtains again. The sun has moved around, and Steve’s kitchy armchair (covered in rumpled clothing that needs relegating to the laundry) is in the slash of sunshine that makes it though. Bucky looks like he might enjoy a sun bath, and sitting up for a while. 

If Tony’s interpreting the murder-face correctly. 

He takes an absent sip of the hot mug in his hand and-- ugh. It continues to be cloyingly thick, delicious and way above Tony’s pay grade. If he wasn’t off coffee, this wouldn’t even be a thing, but he’s craving a cup of something hot, and Bucky’s soup is _right there._

“Hey, beautiful,” he murmurs, in his best soft-morning voice. Steve’s weirded-out face slips right off and he relaxes. When he looks up, Tony makes sure to be looking at Bucky instead, but instead of bristling, Steve goes all soft and gooey. 

Oh they are in _so much trouble._

“Engineer,” Bucky tries. His voice is better, marginally, than a cougar who’s gargled a porcupine. He looks so affronted that Tony distracts him by waving the mug almost in arms reach. “Do you want to get up?” he asks. “There’s a patch of sun on that armchair if you want it.” 

Bucky looks baffled. “What-- am I a plant?” he asks, apparently genuinely. 

“Wouldn’t hurt to get you some rays, you look like the storm washed all the colour out of you.” 

Steve snorts and starts to untangle himself from Bucky’s empty sleeve, and the blankets he’s been weighed down with. The chair _is_ covered with his dirty laundry. Tony isn’t cleaning up after him; there’s usually blood, soot and cement chips in Steve’s dirty pile. Bucky gets a determined look and shuffles out of the blankets. 

He’s not wearing any pants, so Tony thinks about turning his back but, yeah, no. Bucky wobbles on the edge of the bed and Tony steps forwards. His belt turns out to be the best hand hold, and Bucky hangs on tight, like the world is spinning for him, the poor little shit. 

He’s gone grey and Tony knows that face; he’s blind from low blood pressure. The grip doesn’t falter, but Bucky sways forwards and Tony tucks him against his front for a second, just until he takes a breath. 

He relaxes, shoulders drooping. 

Steve appears at his side and waves some winter sweatpants. 

“Yeah.” 

He sits next to Bucky and offers them, draping them over his knee so he can feel the fabric. “Hey Buck, you wanna put some warm pants on? They’re mine, pretty big. I’ll help you.”

Bucky speaks before his eyes clear completely and his grip on Tony loosens and slips away. The inch of skin at Tony’s waist where Bucky’s fingers touched is really distractingly tingly. “Your clothes won’t ...fit me. Shrimp.” 

“Asshole. They will. Gimmie your foot.”

Tony backs off while they very gently wrestle with the pants and each other. He opens the curtain to let the sun in, get that chair cushion nice and warm.

Next thing he knows, he’s juggling the mug of soup to try and keep it level while Bucky hauls him away from the window and covers him with a metal arm that is long gone. 

He snarls in pain, his face a picture of betrayal that the arm is gone, that it’s hurting him, god, Tony can’t read all of that at once. He falters and Tony guides his fall towards the armchair.

The curtain falls shut again.

Bucky’s pained breaths are wrenching; Tony can’t really handle it. Steve steps in, of course, and Tony takes a second to back away and breathe. His heart rate is sky high, his watch is beeping a very quiet warning. Deep breaths. _Now_ , he’s noticing having missed his medication. His adrenalin response, sheesh. 

“Hey Buck, hey... did you see something? Do we need to go?” 

Tony tenses again, going still and alert until Bucky shakes his head. 

“Fourteen sniper emplacements, six with view of this window. Curtains stay. ...closed. Handler integrity must be. Maintained.” Tony had known that, it was on the list of ‘reasons Steve should move in with Tony’. But it’s different when it’s in Bucky’s broken-glass voice. 

He looks up at them both, eyes sharp, and his voice changes, mouth quirks up on one side. “I like you two mooks. Sue me.” 

Steve makes a sound like Bucky’s stabbed him, and Tony doesn’t feel much better. That’s one hundred percent home grown Brooklyn boy, right there. 

“Eat your soup, charmer. Here.” 

They all pause and wait out Bucky’s pain when the stump of his left arm moves under the hoodie. He’s been left handed for over ninety years, muscle memory doesn’t fade over night. Tony crouches down and presses the mug into Buck’s hand and holds it there until the warmth seeps through. 

He doesn’t say thank you, but Tony suspects no one has said ‘thank you’ to him in seventy years, so Tony’s not exactly going to insist. His face as he drinks is enough.

Once the food is in him and the grey pallor has faded a bit, he leans back and closes his eyes. They let him nap in the chair, his head resting on the wings of the old fashioned back. He’s a contradiction in muscle and a fuzzy sweater. Where he isn’t skin and bone, he’s bulging muscle, and where he isn’t murderous he’s soft and sweet as a sleeping kitten. 

Tony pulls Steve back towards the living room and their hands tangle together. Tony doesn’t know which of them needs it more right now, good thing it’s mutual, and clings on. 

“Steve.” 

Steve nods, his face scrunched up, and presses the heel of his free hand against his temple. Tony knows from experience that the pressure won’t help Steve’s twisting thoughts align. 

“Pepper’s coming over, any minute now.” 

Steve blinks at him. “Is that...safe?” 

“She has extremis, Steve,” Tony reminds him gently. Steve blushes anyway. “She’ll be fine, even if he loses himself.” 

“He won’t.”

“No, he won’t. _God_ , I’d never-- he’s something else, honey. He really is.” 

Steve nods and they crumple in on each other, two broken trees still standing only because their branches are tangled together.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time to get moving.

They stay leaning, breathing in each other, and Tony swears he can already smell Bucky on Steve's skin. His heart does a two-step; he's worried and the abused bit of muscle he calls a vital organ dislikes that. A lot. A deep breath helps marginally, but it was a long night, and his anxiety about losing Steve to Bucky isn't going anywhere.

 

He needs to talk about that with him, but Steve is in a couple of different pieces right now; he struggles with that kind of conversation at the best of times. Later.

 

They stand and watch the dust motes in the slitted sunbeam coming through the window. The carpet throws a warm red glow up the wall, and there's a warm smell to the room; part soup, part sunshine. It’s hard to put _this_ together with _that;_ storm rain and blood that flowed cold off metal.

 

When they doorbell rings, neither of them can say how long they stood and stared. In the bedroom, Bucky wakes with a pained sound and Steve's off like a shot to ... something. Tony imagines all sorts of scenarios, from Bucky thinking they're under attack to the injury on his neck leaking spinal fluid again.

 

Tony shudders himself free of the thought and goes to let Pepper in.

 

She's in casual clothes, the kind the paps have caught her in here before, and she's got a monster handbag hanging casually from her elbow. Tony doesn't pretend to know what she can get away with wearing, but that handbag is down right suspicious. He could fit the Mk V in there.

 

“Tony, honey, are you okay?” she asks, halfway to the couch already and dropping the bag on it. The couch creaks under the weight, and Tony gets swept into her super-human hug. She's really warm, a balmy 39°C on a normal day, and he lets her hold him up for a little while.

 

“I'm okay, Pep, he's...” She puts a hand to the back of his neck and he melts into her, takes a second to make words happen again. "He's here. He's safe-- his _arm, Pepper,”_ he chokes up again. There's still blood staining on the kitchen tiles, and now she's here, the image of the thick, sticky-black clots of it is clawing at him.

 

She guides him to the sofa and they sit next to the suspicious handbag, which has formed a gravity well in the local spacetime fabric. “You fixed it, Tony, he's going to be fine.”

 

“Serum,” he manages, eyes shut and covered with a fistful of sleeve. Pepper, the sneak, puts a hand over the nick Bucky's knife left in his back. It'd bled a fair amount, he feels crusty. But, it's long since closed and clotted; he's fine. He knows she's agreed when she covers the nick back up with his shirt and pats it gently.

 

“His stump...It'll be healed up in a few days. Remember Steve's toe?” She makes him lean on her shoulder and reaches over him for a side pocket in the handbag. The rattle is familiar and Tony gropes for the pill box she's holding.

 

“Yeah. Because that wasn't at all bizarre and creepy.” He swallows the blue one dry, but leaves the yellow pill; he needs to eat first, for that one.

 

She humms in agreement, then falls quiet and Tony takes the time to dry his face. They sit and listen to the voices from the bedroom; that deep, hissy rumble from Bucky's damaged throat doesn't resolve into words. Steve's trying to get him to go back to bed, which is probably a good idea. He's fed, now, and they're going to change his bandages as soon and Tony's got the get up and go to actually get up, and go.  He's preempted in his attempts to tear himself away from Pepper’s hug by Bucky raising his voice.

 

“Designation Stark, Tony, unit techn--. Mechanic.”

 

Pepper pushes him up by his ass, and he goes. Behind, he hears Steve's couch protest the bag's weight again, and knows she’s following.

 

“Bucky. Hey, whatcha need?” He asks, following behind Steve and Buck to the bed. Steve grunts wordlessly and is visibly doing most of the work. Bucky’s left foot in particular is dragging. There was no injury there though, Bucky must just be that tired.

 

“Surface integrity compromised.”

 

Tony twists his brain around a little to translate, but once he has it’s obvious; there’s a spreading red flower on Bucky’s bandages, where Steve has pulled back the sweater.

 

“Okay. Sure. I’ll patch that up, no problem.”

 

Pepper squeezes his shoulder in support and disgorges half the contents of her supplies into the open mouth of Steve’s first aid bag. Dressings, drugs, and a suture kit or three. He’s still hoping they won’t need those.

 

“You going to be okay doing this?” she asks, privately. Steve looks up; super hearing, but politely ignores them. “We can get one of the others in, or a professional.”

 

“No, yeah. I’ll be fine. Thanks for bringing supplies, though. It makes it a little less...traumatic.” More sterile gloves for instance. He pulls on a pair and gets out the dressing scissors.

 

“I'll be right outside,” Pepper says, and flees with the rest of the supplies. He's hoping it's mostly food, and holding out for donuts. He deserves that much, after the night they've had.

 

Once Bucky settles down, Tony perches on the bed in front of him and rests a careful hand on his ribs, below the stump. Bucky's chest expands with a dull roaring sound, just on the edge of hearing, before he relaxes into the touch. He can feel Bucky's heart thrumming through the heavy muscles, a fair amount faster than Steve's resting forty beats a minute, but he is relaxed, and Tony's fairly sure it's the blood loss. They need to get more fluids into him.

 

“Hey. Tell me how you're feeling, honey.”

 

“I'm fuckin peachy, _peaches._ 'S bleeding,” he growls. His eyes stay heavy and most of the way closed, but they glimmer and Tony feels the gaze like a warm blanket. “Damage warning escalation,” he continues, robotic words in a growling, husky tone. Steve chokes off a sound, but Tony can't focus in him right now. “--approaching non-functionality. Nausea. Emesis warning.”

 

Tony winces sympathetically. “I'll numb it up quick as I can, let me know if it gets too much to handle.”

 

Bucky nods, stubble shifting as he clenches his jaw, and Tony snips away the compression dressings. They come away easily enough, and Tony uses a gentle drip of saline to wash away clotting where they don't, and underneath is a wound that looks days older than it is. The deep holes left by the struts have blackened with scabs, it's one of those that's leaking a steady pulse of crimson into the peeled back dressing.

 

The bigger stump-end wound is less well-healed, where the metal humerus was rejected wholesale from Bucky's body. Some of the skin is white and dead and washes away with a little saline.

 

Bucky's good hand fumbles and grips the sheet with feverish strength. Right. Tony drops the wash and opens the tube of numb Steve holds out for him.

 

He tries not to flinch away from the worst of the injury, makes sure it's coated all over, and Bucky relaxes wholesale before he's even finished.

 

Blood washes some of it away, and there's clear yellow fluid diluting it at the stump end, so Tony dabs and dries and applies a second coat. Bucky's clotting factor is as fast as Steve's; cleaned up and held still, the cracked scab stops bleeding in a few minutes.

 

Tony needs to ask an expert, but he thinks Bucky won't need a pressure bandage now. It might even be a bad thing, he's healing so fast. A quick pass with his phone camera to show JARVIS and he wraps the stump back up in a padded non-stick dressing. With the weird, shiny seaweed fabric in place, he waits for J to analyse the images and, yeah; confirmation, those clots don't need his help now. A much looser wrap, just enough to hold everything in place, prevent friction and, ah, leakage.

 

It's not all blood, and his brain doesn't want to even think the word 'discharge’-- oh there it goes. He shudders delicately once his hands are off Bucky's stump. At least _he_ knows not to call it pus, _Pepper._

 

She is immune to his ire, and also in the other room. Hmph.

 

He degloves, chucks the hazardous waste into Steve's trashcan --gonna need to incinerate the evidence there-- and turns all his attention back on Bucky. He looks...good. Drugged. If his serum works like Steve's, and there's no reason to think it doesn't, his pain tolerance is high because he pumps out extra endogenous opioids, not because he's not feeling it to begin with, so the sudden release of pain signals frees up a whole shot of happy.

 

When he rubs his open palm over that weirdly vulnerable, cold-looking empty space over Buck’s ribs, he manages to drag his eyes open and whoa; they're blown to a possibly-unsafe diameter. Tony smiles and twists to check the curtains are still closed. At least they know the local anaesthetic is working, and he got full coverage.

 

Steve's vanished somewhere and Tony, not being a ridiculous human being, can't resolve the mumblings from the rest of the apartment into coherent words. Bucky might be able to, but fuck knows why he'd bother; his hand is creeping across the bed to Tony's knee and he has a suspicion that he's not allowed to leave. Tony is okay with this, 100% on board.

 

He nudges the trash can away far enough that the blood smell won't bug him, and crawls on to the bed. Bucky’s awkward, like he doesn't remember right now how to make space for him, which had come naturally the night before, but Tony's okay with that. He can keep up; it's bound to change, the way Bucky's voice changes as his... programming? Protocols? Take the front seat.

 

Steve, not so much; he isn't that kind of flexible. He's actually kind of a conversational steam train: a while to get going, then _oomph_ , hard to slow down. They'll work it out, that kind of behavioral consistency might be exactly what Bucky needs to work through his different… styles?

 

“How're you feeling, honey?” he asks into the quiet air between them. Bucky wanted him close; he's close. Bucky's holding onto his clothes, and curled into Tony's personal space, and it's warm and safe-feeling, even when Bucky's reply sounds like an error report by a text-to-speech program from the nineties.

 

“Damage warnings suppressed; approaching unit shutdown. Emesis alert cancelled.” And he closes his eyes. Sleep would be good, and no throwing up, also good. Tony settles in to… what, keep watch? He huffs at himself, because that is so not his poison. But that's a bit like what it feels like. Only without the pressure to stay awake. He has a feeling he's just as good a guard asleep as he is awake, as far as Bucky cares. He is _incredibly_ tempted. It's not like he needs to go anywhere without Bucky today, and Bucky isn't going anywhere at all until the high wears off.

 

But Tony's not quite there yet, so he fumbles on the bedside table behind him for his phone and knocks it to the floor with a sad beep. Ah. A slight adjustment and second fumble, and he retrieves it unharmed. It landed on its volume control, hence the beep, and he turns it down the rest of the way. Jarvis has queued some homework to brush up his medical knowledge, which he studies diligently, and a report on who exactly is watching Steve's place this week.

 

If there's any danger of Bucky going AWOL, it's going to be in response to one of these assholes attacking them. No saying whether a journalist is more or less threatening than an FBI surveillance station though.

 

The Tower isn’t any better, and Bucky wouldn’t have any way of leaving; he’d be trapped, and that’s the last thing he needs right now. Oh sure, it would be physically safe, until the gods and monsters showed up. But that’s only part of the equation here. He needs autonomy, low-risk choices he can make for himself.

 

Tony sends J a query for a list of his private properties, stipulating one’s he’s not invited the press to at any point.

 

_Unfortunately, sir, none of the available residences have appropriate anonymity for your purposes._

    _Not even the one upstate?_

_No sir. After you broke your leg last year, all Stark properties bar Malibu were surveilled by the media in an attempt to ascertain your whereabouts._

_Invasive bastards. Look for new properties, and put upstate and Minnesota up for sale. Thanks, J._

_Of course. May I undersell?_

_Sure! You got a charity lined up?_

_Indeed._

 

J leaves him a link; some kind of transients shelter is looking for a property. Sure, they can do that. He shuffles down on the pillow and turns his phone out of the way to check on Bucky; he’s fast asleep. He’s still pale, and that particular kind of shiny that comes with bloodloss. They should do a blood-type, see if he can have some of Steve’s... It’d get him up on his feet in no time.

 

He sends another text, and Pepper’s phone beeps from the next room. When she opens the door to see what he wants, the smell of cooking beef wafts in and he can hear Steve clattering about the kitchen.

 

“Hey, Tony. No, I didn’t. You need a doctor to do something like that, it’s not safe, even with the serum.”

 

Tony sighs and shifts his but so she can sit down behind him. “Do we have anyone on staff?”

 

“Avengers staff, yes,” she says, and he can hear the ‘but’ coming before she’s even sat down. “--but Bucky’s a wanted man, you can’t drag them into this for the sake of twelve hour reduction in recovery time.”  

 

He leans back against her and she rests her elbow on his hip, both of them looking at Bucky. It’s not so much the time as the suffering. He looks awful, Tony just wants him to feel better.

 

She clicks away at her phone and they stay leant against each other until the warmth on both sides almost has Tony napping. His head’s rolling ideas around, wondering what kind of place Jarvis will find for them, wondering whether they can get Bucky into transport without being spotted.

 

“Here, Bruce says IV fluids will do the same thing, and we have those on hand.” She pats him on the shoulder perfunctorily. “We’ve got this, you worrier.”

 

He huffs and buries himself in his phone. “Same thing my ass, what about all those blood cells, huh? I’d like to see you regrow--”

 

Bucky rolls forwards and traps Tony well and good under his injured shoulder. His phone gets squished between them and Tony _may_ make an indignant sputtering noise. Maybe. He’s well and truly trapped, anyway.

 

“Unit Mechanic; _noisy_.”

 

“You can talk; you sure are chatty for a sleeping person, babe. Just saying. No judgment, I mean, I’m pretty sure I’m a sleep talker--”

 

“He is.”

 

“--but honestly, I thought you were out of it. Sorry for waking you, honey.”

 

Bucky grunts and settles in, still pinning him and his phone to Steve’s bed. In other circumstances, this would be awesome but alas, Bucky’s slightly cooler than he should be, and using his numb stump way too much. Tony eels his arms out from under him and wraps them over Buck’s shoulders so he can pull the blanket up.

 

“Lunch’ll be ready soon, do you want some, Pepper?” Steve asks from the doorway. Tony cranes his neck to look over and he’s got a dishcloth draped over one shoulder, like a pro.

 

Bucky gets marginally less heavy and looks over too, stomach making interested noises; they're gonna struggle to keep up with him for a few days, that's for sure.

 

“Please. I'll work on the logistics while we eat, and we'll plan to get you all out of here before the press notice Tony's not at work.”

 

“Sure,” Steve replies. “Where are we going?”

 

Bucky tenses too, and Tony turns back to him to rub his back soothingly. “We were thinking somewhere in the sticks, privacy, clean air. No press corps. We're open to negotiation.”

 

Bucky shifts like a rusty car; jerkily and with a faint groaning sound. “Woodland. Small town, used to tourists.”

 

Tony has an impression of Bucky and Steve in ‘I <3 Yellowstone’ shirts that are at least three sizes too small, and this occupies his brain for long enough that Pepper is already googling with J by the time he surfaces.

 

Bucky is awake thoroughly now, and burrows into the blankets a little more, tucking his chin to hide from a draft. It’s not cold in here by a long shot, but blood loss will do that.

 

“How about Colorado? There’s a little town on the hiking trails that mainly caters to climbers and walkers this time of year.” Tony likes Colorado; it’s got great mountains and great corporate retreats.

 

Bucky just nods and drops his head on the pillow.

 

“I’ll pack after we’ve eaten. C’mon,” Steve says, before vanishing back into the kitchen.

 

The smell of food is making Tony hungry, and he wants to take the rest of his meds, so he levers himself up. Bucky’s sudden iron grip is a reminder of last night, of rain soaking into his shirt, and a nick over his kidneys, but when Tony freezes Bucky’s face is twisty confusion and sadness. So Tony stays sat where he is.

 

“How’s your head feeling, love? Spinning feeling at all?”

 

“Stable. Likelihood of loss of consciousness minimal with pain management in place. Thanks, doll, help me up?”

 

Tony’s getting whiplash, christ; that was a half pint of russian with a Brooklyn chaser. “Sure.”

 

He’s heavy, but much more stable than last time he was up; that dragging foot is behaving itself again and he doesn’t veer off like he’s having hypotensive vertigo. It’s a small flat; they join an anxious looking Steve at the kitchen table without any problems. Pepper smiles at them with a look Tony doesn’t have logged to a specific meaning. It’s not mean though. Sad?

 

They hook Bucky up to an IV bag without too much trouble.  Since they’re trying to feed him up, Tony uses a vein high on his forearm to keep Bucky’s hand free and carefully dredges his brain for the last time he did this (on a jet, in high winds, on Clint). There’s no scarring on his veins, so Tony has hopes that this isn’t putting him into some kind of dissociative state. But with the serum, who knows? There’s no way you can keep a super soldier sedated without an IV... unless you use gas, which is actually possible; he never did get a good look at the mask they’d had him in.

 

He tapes the tube down, possibly a little clumsily; his hands are shaking now. They’d been still when he was holding the needle, at least. Buck is giving him this _look_ , and his hand twitches like he’s testing it. Apparently, Tony’s work passes because the bastard actually smiles. It's that quick ‘thank you, sorry, let’s move on’ grimace that people do when they bump into you, but it’s still an actual facial expression.

 

“Eat up, Buck. You’re on doubles.” And it's gone, wiped blank again as Steve puts a bowl of browned beef cubes, chilli and sticky rice down in front of him. He then tops it off with a crusty hunk of bread pulled off the loaf with his hands, crumbs everywhere, and Bucky comes alive again with an expression of exasperation. Pepper and Tony exchange glances across their bowls, half the size; Tony says ‘see?!’ with his eyebrows and Pepper nods in a very tiny and slightly sad way.

 

Steve’s Bucky is there.

 

Pepper kicks his shin under the table, sans shoes, and he gets his pill box out like a good boy. Food time.

 

The meat is actually steak, medium rare, cut up into chunks; Tony’s only been given a spoon, so that’s what he eats with, and it’s easy. He catches Steve’s eye and gives him a ‘well done’ smile, which he hopes gets across; Steve’s answering grin is a little weak and baffled though.

 

Bucky is tucking in just like Steve does after a long day. The serums can’t be identical, the circumstances were way too different for that, but they’d grown up together, in hard times; maybe this is from before.

 

By the time they finish, Tony lagging behind out of sleepy laziness, Pepper has everything well in hand.  House has been booked, a food order placed, and flight organized.

 

They’ll be traveling by Avenjet; all they have to do is get to the roof and Clint will pick them up. No Avenger staff required to be complicit, and it’ll look like any other time they get scooped up for an action somewhere. Hopefully, they’ll be able to hide Bucky in the dust, in that between time after the jet kicks up a plume, but before they blow it away.

 

“What do you think, Buck? Tactically sound?”

 

Tony stuffs his face full with his last chunk of steak and keeps his mouth shut; it takes Bucky almost a full minute and lots of blinking to reorient his brain.

 

“...not many up there last night. I wasn’t seen, that’s for sure. No one’s got a bead in here,” he chin-points at the kitchen window, which overlooks a brick alley wall and a fire escape. “Yeah. Green light. Pilot?”

 

“Clint’s good people.”

 

“Well then, you boys have half an hour to pack; get on with it. Bucky, you stay with me, I want to show you something.”

  


XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

  


The woman is familiar. Old watch list sometime before the last Chair. He stays, tethered by plastic and needle to his chair, but willing. She is. Invulnerable but not a threat.

 

“So, you can have this, my AI friend has taken all of my data off it, and I have a new one waiting at home,” she says, holding out her comm to him, “I’ve put the local topographical data for your destination on it for you, and the tactically significant services.”

 

He takes the device and the map is already open. He nods; there is food, hardware and disguises available within a two mile radius of the marked base.

 

“There’s a folder on the house, if you want to look it over. The icon that looks like an ‘Exit’ sign.”

 

He taps it with his thumb; he is lucky the comm is a compact type and he can reach the whole screen without putting it down. Or she is. Considerate. The folder contains images; building in woodland, closed porch, no balcony, stone construction with wooden eaves and rafters. Acceptable location and orientation.  

 

“This. Is good, briefing. Thank you.”

 

She nods; this is apparently not a surprise that thanks are her due. Fair. Behind, unit Mechanic and Stevie are packing, banging about in drawers and cupboards. They should bring the blanket, and hot-cuddle-thing. These are necessary materiel for continued improvement in function and comfort.

 

“Bucky?”

 

He reorients to her, blankets returning to a relatively low priority.

 

“Are you sure about this? There are other options, you don’t have to do this the way Tony’s imagined it.”

 

“Query, briefing: Is this a good plan.”

 

“To be honest, it’s fine; it’s about as secure as it can get. The money wont be traced, and even Tony can duck recognition in a place like this.” She gestures at the comm device. It is... a phone, he thinks, on basis of size, but he has seen tablet devices this size also. Inconclusive.

 

“Units Mechanic and Captain can safely accompany?”

 

She smiles and it is very positive. “Yeah, they’re not in any danger.”

 

“This-- me. Is not a danger? Really, doll?” She’s an optimist, obviously, that smile’s like sunshine and fuckin’ daisies.

 

“Well, you managed not to stab Tony last night, under pretty extreme duress. I think you’re fine.”

 

He feels pretty bad about that, christ. He’s not got any weapons on him, he’s too shaky not to stab his own fine self with ‘em anyway, but he wishes he had, so’s he could give her the little one he’d held on Mechanic during....that. “Won’t happen again, ma’am. That asshole’s too darn pretty to die.”

 

She laughs (sunshine and _daisies_ ) and nudges his shoulder. “Be good, casanova; you’ll make him swoon.”

 

He salutes with the kind of casual flick he’d have kicked Fresno’s ass for, back when, and she seems pleased. Over his shoulder, Tony is saying something irrelevant and Steve’s talking right over him in a list of stuff to pack; it's a nice buncha sound.

 

At this point, his whole shoulder is completely numb. The gel shit has spread its drug right up into the old socket and rotator cuff and the world has a rosy glow, but he figures this clear feeling isn’t gonna last that long.

 

“I’m a mess, Ms. Pep, I’m not. Like this. I been running a long time now, can’t remember half of it.”

 

She leans in and speaks gently, not looking at him. “We know, Bucky, we expected a lot worse. I expected worse, this morning. Steve, not so much; stubborn optimist, right? But we’re prepared.”

 

He is relieved. Chest loose. “I don’t-- can’t think. Most of the time. This. Feels like crawling on grit.”

 

She curls an arm around his back, her hand landing very cautiously on the vulnerable empty space under his stump. It’s warm, leaching through his shirt. “We know, your accent changes. You do what you need to, up to and including not speaking to those two lunks for a week.”

 

He shivers and leans towards her. It is good to have permission. He relaxes and lets his tongue go thick and slow; there’s no merit to more talking. This is enough. It was hard and now he’s tired. He nods.

 

“Ride will be here soon, do you have anything you want to pick up before we leave? From wherever you’ve been staying?”

 

He thinks in brief images, flashes of tunnels and flops and squats. He has nothing. “No. Stealth protocols in effect.”

 

She pats his shoulder and stands, smiles, goes to remind ‘the boys’ about something.

 

Alone at the table, his mind feels slow, then grey, then like nothing at all. He just is what he is; introspection retreats back into a place he can’t experience.

 

The room is warm. The body experiences no pain, or hunger, but it is thirsty; he drinks.

  


XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

  


Waiting for the Quinjet is done on the top landing of the apartment block staircase. The only use it usually gets is storing the cooler during the odd summer cook-out. Steve loves them but they’re rare; everyone is busy, and people only get organised when Mrs. Benson on the top floor decrees it with the kind of official dignity that Steve remembers Falsworth’s wife for. Steve passes through here regularly, though, so it’s clear of clutter and the door doesn’t stick. The roof outside is currently in full sun and view of the other rooftops, and Bucky really isn’t a fan.

 

“No. Transport will provide cover, asset will provide cover during transit; unit mechanic will not egress. Repeat, do not egress.”

 

“Sure, babe. If you say so,” Tony says. Bucky has his hand tight around Tony’s wrist and isn’t showing any signs of letting go.

 

In the distance the quinjet’s buzz is getting louder. Even Tony will pick up on it soon. Steve hefts his pack onto his shoulder.

 

“Tell us how this needs to happen, Buck; I haven’t done roof recon this week,” he tells him, and it’s only a white lie; he never does roof recon, it’s mostly paps, the NSA and the FBI. “And you sure do seem to have an opinion.”

 

Bucky’s eerie blank face turns to Steve and he nods. “West by south west is the best line, apartment at the end of the block, superior vantage, eight meter elevation. Avoid.”

 

“Copy, avoid line.” He lifts his hand to key his radio through to Hawkeye. “Clint, landing aspect; west by southwest of stairwell.”

 

“Gotcha, visual confirmed. Wanna give me a wave?”

 

“Negative, Clint,” Steve responds, glancing at Buck’s tight shoulder and leftward tilt. “Running at highest operational security.”

 

A low whistle on the line. “Your boy’s on edge?”

 

“Yep. The paps on the corner of 18th have a good line on us.”

 

The tune of the jet’s engines changes momentarily. “Yeah, I see it. They’re getting set up to take their pictures now. I’ve been spotted. I’ll show em my beautiful mug, break their lenses.”

 

Steve snorts into the mic and leaves the line open while he gets together the straps of his luggage. They’re taking enough that, assuming the washing machine works, they won't have to buy anything until the weather turns.

 

The roof hums through his boots and the line of sun under the roof door goes dark. The jet’s roar is deafening, so he signals Bucky and Tony out with a gesture instead. Bucky’s gaze is hard and quick through the gap in the opening door and he leads Tony out quickly, still holding his wrist. They vanish into the open hatch of the jet, obscured by kickback dust.

 

Steve’s calmer; he can afford to be caught in a few pictures, and takes the time to lock up. When the dust clears, the sunlight is hot on his neck and he marvels at how big the sky is, for the day after a big storm. It’s completely clear, so blue that it darkens to indigo at its zenith.

 

Having Bucky back is making him all soft, there's a warm feeling inside his chest too. It distracts him just a moment too long.

 

The bullet hits him in the back.


	5. Chapter 5

Bucky sees nothing. The Captain said ‘highest operational security’, and Bucky expects him to be seconds behind them, well in advance of the response time from the second and third sniper lines in the south and north east. 

He hears nothing; the jet is loud and he is not equipped with comms. 

He  _ feels _ the mechanic go rigid. Watches the tote fall from his grip. Follows his gaze. 

The red blooms high and left on the Captain’s shoulder. The shoulder blade is compromised. A spray of red on the door; through and through. Possible infringement of brachial plexus and aortic arch. 

The mechanic lurches for the ramp and Bucky copies, overtakes. Steve ( _ steve steve idiot fucking--) _ meets them at the ramp and the sniper’s second shot is knocked off when they haul him inside. It ricochets off the ramp, passing through the space where Steve’s gut would have been. 

The blood has spread four inches. Steve hits the deck of the jet already yelling to the pilot to take off. Another bullet ricochets into the cabin, throwing sparks and burying itself into a cargo container. All hands make themselves smaller targets and swearing erupts. The hatch closes with a final ‘whoomph’ of air pressure and the asset knows what to do with what is left. This is a known quantity. 

Fabric, a shirt, he wads under the entry hole. More padding over the larger, messier exit wound in front, and a knee on the pad to pin the--

“-Goddamn fucking idiot! I told you! You never fuckin listen, Stevie, do ya?” He growls. The voice is rough and familiar and painful on its way out. 

Steve grunts and looks inappropriately delighted for a man with someone kneeling on his bullet hole. Bucky is obviously not pressing hard enough.

“Oh god, Steve, you’re fine, okay? I- ah, We’ll fix you up in no time-- Clint, Tower, now!” 

The mechanic is panicking, changing the plan without proper tactical thinking. A frustrated sniper round thuds into the external hull but no dent is visible. “Pilot, continue original flight plan. Prioritize sightline disruption, west by nor-west. Comms; Unit Potts. Request additional supplies delivered to destination.”

“Copy. Sightline disruption. Tony, I’m pulling height, y’all make up your fucking minds before I hit flight altitude.”

“What-- he needs surgery! His chest cavity is-- Steve, how’s your breathing-- are you--” 

“I can breathe fine,” he says, demonstrating by gasping against the pain when Bucky shifts. He grunts. “Even with this asshole sitting on me.” 

The mechanic exhibits malfunction --improper breathing-- and stabs Captain Idiot with an autoinjector. “You, do not get to have an opinion.” 

“Sure I do, I’ve been shot before.” 

“And the... the kneeling?” Mechanic is incredulous. Hah, see Steve, you are inherently unreasonable.

Steve nods, and the splatter of blood up his neck smudges on his collar; he is white from the shock, breathing uneven. Steve may in fact be a lying cheater. “It’ll clot in no time.” 

“Bucky, back me up here--” 

“Injury severity minimal; if it ain’t pulsing, he ain’t dyin’.” It is a stock phrase, played on his tongue like magnetic tape. It is vexatious; Steve is in shock and requires treatment. However; death is unlikely. 

“You mean, if he isn’t  _ actively spurting--” _

The mechanic is becoming less and less useful, and Steve appears to be thinking about getting up to comfort him. Bucky kneels harder and Steve gives him a  _ look _ that causes an unknown reaction in the unit’s stomach. He turns to the mechanic and grips him by the back of the neck. 

“Captain needs fluids, warmth, food, pressure. Wound will seal in advance of dangerous bloodloss.” 

Tony-mechanic is looking at him now, and also causing unidentified reactions in the stomach area. He looks tired.

“Oh, shit--!” The pilot’s invective is bare warning before the plane lurches violently and a fourth bullet makes a crunching, dull sound on the rear of the plane. Tony is wrenched out of Bucky’s grip and Bucky is forced to balance using the cargo netting. 

“Tony; we’ve been tagged!” the pilot continues. “I’m reading a radio emitter, maybe a cell-- J?”

Bucky rebalances the pressure on Steve’s wound and checks him over visually; he is green. Ouch, sorry buddy. Bullets with tracking technology embedded are rare and require highly specialised equipment.

"Assessing... surface damage detected,” a voice over com informs them. “Signal ping detected on starboard tail fin.*

Handy. He relays his information on tracker propulsion to the Mechanic, adding: “Estimated range, two miles. Give or take how good they are.” 

“Fuck. They’re expecting us to go to ground; we have to scrape that fucker off. Steve, you holding up?” Tony asks; Steve offers a mute thumbs up, which is a blatant lie. The casualty has a broken scapula and is being knelt on to stem arteriolar bleeds in a wound tunnel six inches long. He has, however nearly stopped actually bleeding. 

“Alright, we’re clear for now. We can expect a chase though, soon as they get launched,” Pilot says, possibly instantly jinxing the entire operation. “Brace for secondary climb and acceleration. Need a call on a destination pretty quick.” 

Bucky raises an eyebrow at Tony.

Indecision makes the mechanic scrub his hands through his hair before sighing explosively. “Fucking fine, middle of nowhere, zero medical assistance. You’d better be right about this,” he tells Bucky vehemently, then raises his voice to the pilot. “Clint, take us west, put us down in a field somewhere and I’ll handle the tracker. I’m going to call Pepper. And get out a blanket for Captain Shock.” 

Tony relaxes, muttering mild blasphemies, and opens a locker under the bench. He is apparently also comms officer for this mission and places a call on his handheld.

A groan pulls Bucky’s attention back to the casualty. The Steve-shaped casualty. Ugh. He appears to be trying to wriggle his glove off and exacerbating his shoulder. Bucky pulls on the velcro and Steve flings it off with an ungainly fledgeling-bird flap. What this has achieved is unclear.

“Buck, how much longer? Ya fuckin’ lump.” He has dropped his head to the metal decking and appears irritated. 

Bucky would like the record to show that irritation is an insufficient emotional response to having a hole blown in one's body. It is, however, one he shares. His knee has become wet through his sweatpants. 

“Bit longer, and you can graduate to this shit,” he waves his stump’s clean bandages like a white flag. 

“Some of that numbing gel would be great right about now.” 

“‘S good stuff,” Bucky agrees. “Too bad my knee’s in the way.” 

The mechanic returns with a pole, blankets and a tool case with a green cross. The pole unravels to form a stretcher, which may be permissible and/or more comfortable in --Bucky shifts his knee slightly-- approximately ten minutes. In the meantime. 

“Blood volume management?” 

The mechanic passes him a bottle and a packet, then retrieves the packet and pours the contents into the bottle when Bucky makes his single handed opinion on this clear. 

“Sorry, forgot. Shake.” 

He shakes the ORS to dissolve and Steve makes an excellent face at it. “ _ Maximum operational security,  _ Captain.” 

“Well sorry for not expecting sni-iiperss-- fuck you, Buck, christ. On my roof on such a beautiful day.” 

Bucky pads out his knee with the proffered sterile gauze and, once the uniform is pulled back by the mechanic, returns the knee to its previous position. This appears to hurt exactly as much as removing the pressure. The casualty's colour is poor, indicative of shock progressing and peripheral blood flow reduction. The casualty will drink his blood volume replacement, regardless of flavour. 

Steve gulps at it with a your-momma-would-wash-your-mouth look for the asset. Ha, Mrs. Rogers would whoop you, boyo. 

Tony fits the casualty with an IV also, and throttles a bag of ringer for maximal flow. His hands shake only after the needle is taped and safe; corroboration of previous observation. Tony doesn’t feel so great about this whole shitstorm, either.

“Why the gak if I’m gettin’ an IV anyway,” Stevie grouches. Bucky reapplies the bottle.

“Zero risk of anesthetic regurgitation; expediency; retribution for getting shot after I fuckin’ told ya, quit squirming.” 

The casualty's legs go still and his eyes squint shut. His metabolism has burned through the initial pain shot. Symptoms: squirming, increase in shock markers in face, and breathing irregularity. Relative importance of wound pressure and pain management inverting. 

Bucky sets his hand on the plane’s deck and slowly lifts his knee. Blood does not immediately fill the dressing pad, and he allows the body to tumble to one side, weakness from prior injury. Rest recommended, contraindicated by dumb-shits-who-get-shot. Steve groans and presses a hand to the exit wound ineffectively. 

“Your turn. Run protocol: wound sealant.”

“Honey, I don’t know what that is-- I’ve got skin glue, and sutures, but I don’t know what to stick to what, I--” unit Mechanic does not have a protocol for exit wounds. This is unfortunate, but Steve’s body doesn’t give a shit what you do, eventually. It’ll fix up. 

“Skin to skin, doll, Stevie needs nothing more’n that, since he got big.”

“Right. Toes.” This nonsense appears to make perfect sense to the casualty, as he groans and flaps at Tony in reprimand. “You don’t get a say, you are awful and your toes are exemplification of all things dreadful about you. Please stop bleeding.”

“I’ll be fine, Tony, stop  _ fussing _ .” 

The mechanic restrains an explosion with visible and laudable effort, and dabs at wet blood with a large cotton pad. Then, Steve can have pain relief. The mechanic handles the gel like it’s poison, and works it into the wound, front and back. 

Then the gloves go in a yellow bucket, and he dons new ones before setting out more equipment with hands that shake only when they’re not holding anything. His left hand is worse. Bucky records this protocol, or attempts to, and assists Steve in rolling onto his side so both sides of the wound tunnel can be treated. Blood re-appears with the move, but it is not a concerning amount. 

The asset is nearing the end of operational status. Warning signals include; dizzyness, compromised optical focus, compromised cognitive focus. He sits back against the cargo netting and hunches his shoulders forwards. The digital jack hurts. 

The stump hurts. 

 

XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX

 

Once Steve’s skin is closed with glue, and immobilised, and the IV’s finished, and-and--and, Tony lets him roll onto his back on the stretcher. It’s softer and warmer than the deck, at least. The green is going off his face as the numb lets his system adjust and he’s heating up as his metabolism cranks out the healing factor. Tony’s shaking internally; stomach muscles, thighs, his system is shot through with the burning hum of adrenalin that the beta blockers aren’t keeping up with. What a fucking bunch they are. He locks his fingers together with Steve’s and squeezes. 

“Thanks, Tony. You did good.” 

“Shut up, Cap, just... shh. Okay?”

“Okay.” Steve lets his eyes close and Tony feels guilty that it’s a relief. There’s a hefty scatter of medical debris in the back with them, but its contaminated with hypernumb and he’s out of gloves. The gel is enough of a hazard without it getting spread around if they have turbulence but he can’t quite make himself let go of Steve anyway. At least they were already planning a recuperation vacation; now it can do double duty and Steve can’t bitch about being off-rota.

When Bucky grabs his free hand he finds that it's already a familiar feeling, warm and chasing some of the shakes out of him. He wants to cry; comedown hormones, ugh. How dare they both be hurt, this isn’t fair in the  _ slightest _ . He follows the pull down into a huddle under Buck’s one good arm and resists the urge to tuck his face somewhere blood-warm and dark. Crook of the neck, armpit, whatever. He resists and watches his thumb sweep against Steve’s pale skin, needing to feel how warm he is, how still alive.

“You two are incredibly stressful,” he grumbles into Bucky’s sweater. “I am incredulous. Increduled.” Bucky is warm and steady, relaxed to the point of limpness. He wasn’t supposed to get up to antics today, he wouldn’t even be walking if they hadn’t pumped him full of fluids over brunch. Tony feels a flash of rage at the sniper that burns bright and hot just long enough to make him tense all over before burning out again.

There’s a cold sweat sticking his shirt to his back.

“Hey, Iron Man?” Clint calls anxiously from the front, invisible around the armour crate and navcon. 

“We’re good, he’s stopped bleeding,” he yells back. “Haven’t you, Stevie-boy.” He knocks Steve’s boot with the toe of his shoe. Steve grunts and kicks back without opening his eyes. The sparkplug tension in Tony’s gut believes it more now he’s said it out loud, but there’s still blood everywhere and there’s an unavoidable viscerality to that.

“I’m going to autopilot, just a sec.” Clint apparently doesn’t believe him. Tony gets to his feet and manages to get Bucky up too; they might as well sit in actual comfy seats, and get Steve up onto the bench proper. 

The spray of blood on the ramp, now the upright rear bulkhead, has dripped down to make an unsettling many-legged splatter pattern and Tony turns firmly away from it.

“Hey Stevie,” he says, crouching down by the head of the stretcher. “Gonna lift you up onto the bed now, it’s straps time.” 

Steve rouses from his painkiller doze and gives Tony a once over that makes him bristle; he is absolutely strong enough to lift a Steve. A half Steve. He fiddles with the straps to get them long enough, though, and it’s enough of a delay that Steve’s halfway out of the stretcher before he can react. Tony scrambles to get the IV bag sorted out, not that there’s much left, and throws the strap to the deck irritably; he should have led with that.

“I can stand and mosey my own way, Tony. C’mere and help me balance.” 

Tony-- ugh. This is just not his day. He slides under Steve’s right arm and squeezes the IV bag to make up for being short; the thread of red in the tube near his arm goes back up where it belongs. The jet stays rock steady even as Clint appears at the hatch; JARVIS’ piloting gets better with every tweak they make. It’s a giant relief to have a proper co-pilot, they’re not a big team when you get down to the grit.

Steve aims himself at the navcon, an upright swivel chair that reclines all of an inch and is completely inappropriate for someone who recently needed kneeling on. Tony takes maybe unfair advantage of Steve’s balance situation and shoves him away, towards the bench on the other side. 

It does double duty as a rack, with IV hooks and an oxygen supply, and is sized with Steve in mind because Tony is not an idiot. Steve doesn’t get a choice about this, and does that unique little huff of his. Tony’s brain helpfully translates it to ‘how dare you be sensible about this I am a supersoldier’. 

“Suck it up, Cap. You’re gonna fall asleep whether you like it or not. We’ll be in Colorado by the time you wake up.

Steve sits, and lets Tony and Clint help him sort his legs out, at least. He’s like jello from the hypernumb and bloodloss, but what kind of supersoldier would he be if he let that slow him down? Idiot.

“How’s Bucky doing?” he asks once he’s ridden out the pain of lying back down. This is why they have a stretcher, but noooo. 

Tony looks back; Bucky is strapped in to navcon and pale as milk with his head tipped back into the rest. The straps are tight across his chest and he’s slumped into them like he’s letting them hold him up. A glimmer of eyeshine is showing through his eyelashes, though, he’s keeping an eye on them. “He’s fine, Steve, strapped in and resting, let yourself relax until we hit Colorado, get some sleep.” 

Steve grunts and shifts irritably in the straps. He’s gone from cheerful high to grump in record time, and Tony picks up his hand for a comforting squeeze. Steve squeezes back and softens into won't-try-to-escape levels of resignation. “Thanks, Tones. I’m sorry.”  

“You better be, idiot. Twice in two days I’ve gone and patched one of you, and this time I don’t even get a cuddle out of it.” Behind him, Clint makes an amused ‘hmph’ sound and shuffles away toward the back. Discarded dressing packages rustle as he kicks them around. 

“Shoulda made the rack bigger,” Steve says with a leer. Or at least what count for a leer if you’re Steve; it’s a kind of polite, faintly acquisitive lusty look. Spoiled right now by the splattered blood and rank exhaustion, though. Tony leans down for a kiss anyway, without thinking, and they reconnect with a soft sigh that reverberates between them. 

“Sleep, Cap. I need to go set some things up. You think you’ll want the hot tub when we arrive, or do you think you can wait?” 

Steve grins wide and it, apparently, takes enough energy that his eyes close and he does his pre-sleep snuffle. 

Tony turns to check on Bucky and finds him looking soft and wry; full of the 1920’s. His eyes flick up to Tony when he gets close enough to touch and the look slips away again like it takes Steve to maintain. The face that replaces is is the kind that tries to work out who to sock in the jaw. 

“How you feeling?” Tony starts with; priorities. 

“Operational capacity’s in the shitter,” Bucky replies in an odd mix of the parroted voice of some old handler and his own slightly anglicised Brooklyn accent. “Surface integrity; not so bad.” He shrugs the stump forwards and the bandages are still pristine white, not even a smudge of dirt from the ramp they’d dragged Steve up. “I fucking told him; he’s gone soft.” 

“It's his house; no one’d tried to shoot him there before. He felt safe.” Tony shrugs. “Thank you for hustling me out.” At the back of the the jet, next to the blood splatter, Clint is fishing in a crack between two plates with a pair of tweezers. He's already got one bullet in a little evidence bag in his other hand, along with a smear of red; that must be the through and through that hit Steve.

Bucky's hand fastens around his wrist and Tony drags his eyes back. The man needs a shower, and fattening up, but its the eyes that tell the story. He’s all here, right now, and they’re flicking over Tony, Steve, the interior of the jet. Eventually, they fix on Tony and the eye contact is enough of a shock that Tony takes his wrist back and busies himself with strapping in next to Bucky. 

“I’m going to track north a bit, until we get out of the burbs,” Clint tells them absently, squinting at the bullets on his way back to the front. “J, find me a good looking spot to get rid of the tracker, yeah?”

“Affirmative, finding a field.” 

  
  


XxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxX


End file.
